Dr Katie McQuaid

Position: Associate Professor of Gender and Climate
Areas of expertise: Anthropology
Email: K.R.V.McQuaid@leeds.ac.uk
Faculty: Faculty of Environment
School: School of Geography
Faculty profile link: https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/geography/staff/1074/dr-katie-mcquaid

Can you tell us about your research, work and expertise in Southeast Asia?

My action research creatively combines social sciences and applied arts methodologies to better understand the diverse impacts of climate change and disasters on urban populations across Indonesia. We collaborate with marginalised communities including women, older people, people with diffabilities, informal workers, migrants, Indigenous people, gender and sexual diverse people, and youth to explore how social and environmental injustices intersect to shape their lived experiences and responses to climate change and disasters. We engage with local arts and artists to co-design tools for research, challenging injustice, and connecting communities with policy- and decision-makers.

Any anecdote you would like to share?

In the surprisingly bland conference room of a rather funky downtown hotel in Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara, in October 2022, I pulled up a chair and set out my notebook and recorder at the beginning of what I thought was going to be a focus group discussion. Fast forward a few hours and the now pushed aside tables were vibrating from the giant speakers that blasted out the backing track for an impromptu catwalk. Wigs and elaborate eyelashes flashed through the air and the room rang with laughter and shouts. This was, to my delight, my introduction the city's queer community and a series of workshops that would later manifest in the creative writing collection: Being Queer In the Island of 1,000 Mosques. I choose this moment here because it highlights what I have found to be true in all my work in Indonesia so far: the creativity and joy inherent in creating safe spaces for some of the most marginalised urban residents; the power of storytelling when we invite these communities to use the arts, media and vernaculars that make the most sense to them; and the value of embracing the whole emotional lives of these stories.